


My English Essay About Homestuck

by CloudDreamer



Category: Hiveswap, Homestuck
Genre: Actual real world politics, Commedia del'arte, Essays, Excessive discussion of Rose Lalonde, mentions of donald trump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-22 19:08:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21081617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer
Summary: It's my English essay about Homestuck.





	My English Essay About Homestuck

My English Essay About _Homestuck_

The Internet has accelerated communication, and with that accelerated communication, humans have done what humans always do: They perform. However, performance on the Internet is hard to define and trying to directly apply old tools to new art without accepting modification is futile--the physicality of the “stage” grows distant and live interaction is slowed to the pace of typing. An example of theater in the digital age is the webcomic _Homestuck_, originally by Andrew Hussie with contributions from a large team of artists, musicians, and writers. It is about four human kids who play a video game that actually destroys Earth. They escape to create another world with the help and hindrance of various alien species. Along the way, they encounter many alternate versions of themselves through branching timelines and inter-multiversal travel. The webcomic consists of seven acts, with numerous sub-acts and intermissions, and evokes a number of different genres, including horror, film noir, and epic poetry. Several works set in unexplored parts of the universe were released following the webcomic’s conclusion. To experience _Homestuck_ is to participate in what is colloquially referred to as “upd8 culture,” the fan response to rapidly unfolding and unpredictable _Homestuck_ content. At the height of upd8 culture, fan response came instantly and in a number of forms, such as fanart, creative writing, literary and cultural analysis, and, of course, the never-ending discourse. Many of the most prominent fan creators were eventually hired, resulting in a wide variety of influences on the story. _Homestuck_'s complex relationship with its audience is fundamentally symbiotic. Despite the many obvious differences from traditional theater, _Homestuck_ shares many similarities, including political relevance, recurring characters, and the deceptive nature of clownery.

As the famous director of commedia del’arte Dario Fo once said, “...a theatre, a literature, an artistic expression that does not speak for its own time has no relevance.” For a work of art to speak for its time, it must address the ever changing political, cultural, and social landscape that it is created in. Homestuck began in 2009, when the Internet’s potential for creative and innovative storytelling was nascent and, unfortunately, _Homestuck_ was not immune to the slur usage and homophobia of the time. Over time, _Homestuck_'s insensitivity was replaced with one of the most nuanced depictions of sexuality and gender in media, paralleling the growing awareness of LGBT issues in the mainstream political discourse. Gay marriage was legalized during the latter half of the comic, and while contemporary media faced backlash for disproportionally killing their sapphic characters, _Homestuck_'s gay and bi women were repeatedly resurrected stronger. On December 22, 2016, Hussie prophetically tweeted, “[H]omestuck will eventually reach a gay singularity. mark it down. it will make [K]orra look like [R]epublican propaganda” in response to a fan. _The Legend of Korra_ was applauded for its groundbreaking finale canonizing the romantic relationship between its female leads, but in the years since, the Nickelodeon cartoon has come under fire for its neoliberal politics and misrepresentation of extremist ideologies (Kay & Skittles, _The Politics of Legend of Korra_). In comparison, _Homestuck_'s politics have grown increasingly leftist, along with its audience. _The Homestuck Epilogues_ pose neoliberal austerity measures as the beginning of fascism and advocate for revolutionary action.

Of course, the heart of _Homestuck_ has always been in its characters and their flexible yet stringently defined designs, similar to traditional theaters’ depictions of archetypes. As Edward Braun wrote, “The mask enables the spectator to see not only the actual Arlecchino before him, but all the Arlecchinos who live in his memory” (Braun, 131). This allows for both continuity and diversity between each instance of a character. This is especially the case in _Homestuck_, where alternate universe and time travel allow for infinite yet mutually exclusive instances of individual characters. For example, the _Homestuck_ character Rose Lalonde has had a number of such iterations but remains identifiable because of the “Mask” of certain details. Where Arlecchinno wears a jacket and trousers with patches of color, Rose has short, light hair, wears a headband, and does not need glasses. If her eye color is shown, it will be purple. She might wear a number of outfits, but they are typically some combination of purple, orange, yellow, and black. She types in lavender and uses long poetic sentences, punctuated by decisive remarks with swears as punch lines, shown in these lines from her _Pesterquest_ route: “I told him that he must be mistaken, since it’s a well-known and accepted fact that magic, although a popular and highly engaging subject of fiction, is fake as hell” (_Pesterquest_, “Something Beyond The Sky”). 

When Rose appears in fanfiction, her most important relationships are with her relative, Dave, or her love interest, Kanaya, such as in works as varied as _Love Letters In Digital Ink _(TactfulGnostalgic) and _Demon Eyes_ (Corvid_Knight). These similarities allow for dramatic contrasts with the elements that are subject to change. Race and body type are the most obvious, as seen in the diversity of cosplay and fanart. However, race and body type deviations are only the beginning of variations between instances. While Love Letters depicts Rose as a paranormal blogger, Kanaya as her new next door neighbor with Shakespearan levels of miscommunication, and Dave as her nosy but emotionally supportive cousin, Demon Eyes features her as a witch, Kanaya as her vampire fiance, and Dave as her heavily traumatized younger relative. Even in _Homestuck_ itself, there is no guarantee that any given Rose will be the same species, the same age, or the same moral constitution, not even taking fusion into account. And yet still, she is recognizable. The many differences between instances only serve to make her even more distinct, just like the various Masks in commedia and even characters from scripted plays. Regardless of whether Romeo and Juliet is set in a modern day beach town or with 1920s Chicago gangsters, the characters remain recognizable, even if the common threads are tighter in scripted performances. Of course, no discussion of theater is complete without a discussion of comedy, and there is no doubt it plays a role in _Homestuck_ and traditional theater.

In both _Homestuck_ and traditional theater, clownery is used to layer humor and critique the society it is created in. In commedia, “[An actor is] the jongleur. [They] leap and pirouette, and make you laugh. [They] make fun of those in power, and [they] show you how puffed up and conceited are the big shots who go around making wars in which [common people] are the ones who get slaughtered” (Dario Fo, worksheet). The satirized depictions of class struggle often rung true to real _Homestuck_, pointing out flaws in the system that were eventually exploited. In retrospect, a good commedia performance can seem darkly ironic. Similarly, _Homestuck_ uses clowns to comment on flaws in the structure of society. In the “alpha” instance of Earth, in _Homestuck_, the Condesce, an alien, manipulates humanity’s paranoia as part of a plan to recreate her fascist rule, and the way Dirk Strider describes it sounds eerily familiar to anyone who paid attention during the 2016 election: “The media deteriorated into this preposterous circus that was in all practical ways inseparable from the power base and government institutions. Popular entertainers became dangerous demagogues, and their roles in the media blurred with those of executive authority. And the most dangerous were the ones who fed into the fear and hysteria most effectively” (_Homestuck_, 4864). However, this section was written years before Trump announced his candidacy for presidency, and the dangerous demagogues he alludes to are not Republicans but literal clowns. To fans at the time, Dirk’s description is hilariously melodramatic, especially when he describes Guy Fierri as the “third and final Antichrist,” but modern fans rereading the section often comment on its remarkable veracity and joke about how they would prefer the fictional dual juggalo presidency, with its authoritarian death camps for “those not deemed sufficiently mirthful” (_Homestuck_, 4866), to the Trump Administration, with its authoritarian concentration camps for refugees.

_Homestuck_ might not be performed on a stage. It might not have actors. It might be far too long for anyone to perform, saving actors spending full weeks on one, heavily abridged performance. But that does not diminish from its relevance; it is the latest entry in a legacy of performance art stretching back centuries as well as the beginning of its own era. There are _Homestuck_ fans with influence over the new generation of creative projects, such as Amber Craig from the_ Steven Universe _creative team, and fanworks are as creative as ever. Classics such as _Theater of Coolty_ by Duckface, an existentialist play about the character Dirk Strider, are being succeeded by projects like _i dreamed of feeling better_ by SarahZedig, an emotionally charged depiction of the popular transgender reading of the main character as the violent and morally complex, June Eg8ert, and introduces an older, more emotionally healthy, version of her sister, Jade Silverbark. Both new instances of June and Jade have been wholeheartedly embraced by the fan community, and the following wave of fan art and spin off creative writing projects is unceasing. It is impossible to fight the influence of _Homestuck_ in this new media landscape. 

WORKS CITED.  
@AndrewHussie (andrewhussie). “@duedlyfirearms homestuck will eventually reach a gay singularilty. mark it down. it will make korra look like republican propaganda.” Twitter, 22 22 Apr. 2014, 12:16 a.m.  
Corvid_Knight, “Demon Eyes.” Archive of Our Own, 2018, https://archiveofourown.org/works/13740258/chapters/31571496.  
Dario Fo, worksheet.  
‘The Fairground Booth’, trans. Edward Braun in WEdward Braun, Meyerhold on Theatre, London, Methuen 1969, p. 131  
Hussie, Andrew. “Alright, I'll admit it. I'm surprised by how Equius dies, so you did what you set out to do there. But funny as it was, I was also disappointed. Did you always want for him to have such a lame death?” Formspring. 6 Feb. 2011, https://wheals.github.io/formspring/formspring.html.  
Hussie, Andrew. “Homestuck” MSPA: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?viewlog=6 Last accessed October 16, 2019.  
“Origins.” Commedia Dell'arte: an Actor's Handbook, by John Rudlin, Routledge, 2002.  
“The Politics of Legend of Korra.” Youtube, Kay & Skittles, 31 Jul. 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ModX151Ipgs&t=6s.  
tactfulGnostalgic. “Love Letters In Digital Ink.” Archive of Our Own, 22 Jan. 2017, archiveofourown.org/works/9140035/chapters/20766790.  
Farah U. Aysha, Pesterquest. Steam, 2019


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